If you’ve wished you could connect your external hard drive to your computer without having to use the USB cable like a hard drive enclosure would but now you can.
Imation announced Thursday the availability of the first wireless USB external hard drive, the Pro WX. The hard drive works just like any other USB hard drive, with one exception… it doesn’t require a USB cable.
Wireless USB has been under development for about five years, and some of the first products were shown at CES 2009 this year. The technology allows you to connect USB 2.0 devices to a computer wirelessly from up to 30 feet away with a throughput speed of up to 480Mbps.
According to Imation, the Pro WX wireless USB external hard drive offers less than that, with speeds of up to only 120Mbps or 15MBps; this is about three times slower than regular USB 2.0 hard drives. At this speed it can finish copying the entire content of a CD-ROM in about 50 seconds. Other than that, this drive is based on the 3.5″ desktop hard drive and offers 1.5TB of storage!
The Imation Pro WX features a sleep mode feature to conserve energy and a one touch, backup sync button for you to manually start a backup when needed. The device is compatible with both desktops, laptops and Mac/Apple OS’s.
In order to take advantage of the wireless USB, your computer needs to support this. As most computers don’t have built-in wireless USB, there are adapters that you can add to the machine. It’s unclear if an adapter is going to only be included with the Pro WX or without.
But what is clear though, is the fact that this is going to be one of the most expensive external hard drives you can find. At the estimated price of $500, about three times the price of regular external portable hard drive enclosures of the same storage capacity, It’s up to you if it’s worth it when the only benefit is losing the USB cable. We can only hope other companies make this product and find a way to cut down on production costs.